Lamp assemblies must be made available in many varying shapes to accommodate modern design as found, for example, in the automotive industry. In addition, such lamp designs are changed almost annually wtih the result that it is generally not practical to produce such lamps in a fully sealed manner such as employed with vehicle headlights. Accordingly, lamp assemblies are conventionally manufactured by attaching the lens to the housing by first inserting a gasket therebetween, which in turn generally necessitates applying gasket cement to the housing to retain the gasket and aid in sealing, and then using screws or other fastener to mechanically hold the lens and housing in assembled relationship.
It will be appreciated that the conventional method of interconnecting lamp lens and housings requires, in a single assembly facility, many different sizes of screws and gaskets which, because of their relatively small size, are easily mishandled, dropped during assembly, improperly sorted as to size and damaged or stripped in the assembly process itself. All these factors give use to increased cost and lowering of production volume.
The present invention contemplates overcoming the above problems by providing a unique lamp structure wherein the lamp lens and housing are not joined by mechanical fasteners.